Netflix Data Reveals ‘Stranger Things’ Insane Premiere Ratings

Netflix may never reveal full “ratings” for movies and TV, but one inescapable fact is now clear: Stranger Things is more popular than Bright. New Nielsen data puts the ‘80s Netflix sci-fi far above other originals in same-day watching, atop other surprising statistics.

Adweek compiled findings from the Nielsen group’s attempts to measure Netflix viewership over the last year through SVOD (subscription video on demand) devices like Roku, Apple TV, video game consoles and smart TVs. The service looks at viewership in the first day of a new Netflix release, and produced one clear winner: Stranger Things Season 2. The second season attracted close to 25 million viewers across all episodes, far outweighing any other Netflix originals. Its closest competitor was Marvel’s Defenders with close to 10 million, followed by Fuller House (right?).

The service also measured “reach,” in which 8.9 million subscribers watched at least six minutes of a Stranger Things Season 2 episode opening day. Will Smith’s Bright had about 5.4 million viewers the first day, while Netflix’s post-Super Bowl Cloverfield Paradox only brought in 1 million. That’s less than Season 2 of The Crown, which brought in 1.6 million.

It gets weirder. Age-wise, 43% of Stranger Things 2 viewers were in the 18-36 range, compared with 53% for Black Mirror. The 65+ range for both was negligible, though Bright, Altered Carbon and The Cloverfield Paradox had 5%, 6% and 7% in that same demographic. An unsurprising 23% of The Crown viewership comes from the 65+ range, yet their interest in Fuller House was lowest of all. Even the new Lost in Space brought in 8%. Get that nostalgia money, I guess?